Awesome Character #1: Milhouse Van Houten

So, I was playing The Simpsons: Tapped Out on my phone and was getting close to unlocking Milhouse when thought to myself about how awesome a character he is. Now, thanks to that random thought, my blog followers will be subjected to a series of posts concerning individual characters from whatever work of fiction I happen to like.

So, here’s the first character of this series: Milhouse Van Houten.

The way he’s drawn alone sort of screams funny (and adorableness), and the comedy bits that revolve around Milhouse poke fun at his misfortunes. Perhaps it’s because his life sucks so much that I find him so much more likable. Milhouse evokes sympathy and buffers it with comedy, and those two things are what I look for in fiction.

One of the most iconic Milhouse moments is where he’s playing a video game and enters his name as “Thrillhouse.” Thanks to old school games only allowing so many characters for your name, however—well, you can see what happens in this clip:

While searching for more Milhouse awesomeness, I came across this beautiful song by Allie Goertz which captures the hilariousness and sadness of the character with references to many of his scenes:

I was planning to write more about Milhouse, but that frickin’ song already captures so much of what I wanted to say. So, I’m just going to end this post with an image of this moment where the bullies are about to push Milhouse down a hill in a shopping cart after tying him up with Quimby campaign bumper stickers. “Mummy’s ready for his mystical journey” (there’s a clip on youtube, but the quality’s not very good).

The Simpsons feature quite a few iconic characters. This is what I gathered after reading an article on character design recently: The yellow characters immediately created a sense of uniqueness. This is all the more interesting seeing that yellow is often considered to be a color suitable for “communication”. The longevity of The Simpsons proves that whatever they communicated, the kept at it for some time!

Getting back to your post:
“Milhouse evokes sympathy and buffers it with comedy, and those two things are what I look for in fiction.”
Youv’e stumbled across a truth that will make sure you create iconic characters of your own.
All the best with your endeavors in writing good literature! 😀